SOURCE: A review of The Embarrassment of Riches, in Spectator, September 19, 1987, pp. 42–43.

In the following review, Quennell offers a generally positive assessment of The Embarrassment of Riches, but finds that Schama's account is occasionally overwrought with superfluous detail.

In his preface to this extremely substantial book [The Embarrassment of Riches], which, with its appendices, notes, bibliography and other learned apparatus, contains nearly 700 pages and finds room for over 300 illustrations, Professor Schama, an alumnus of Cambridge, Oxford and Harvard, makes a somewhat unexpected statement. Although his subject is the 17th-century Dutch Republic during the age of its greatest power and prosperity, his description omits, or lightly passes over, some important aspects of the scene. ‘There is nothing here,’ he warns his readers, ‘about theatre or poetry or music, and if there are images in abundance, they are summoned as impressions of mentality, not vessels of Art’.

Should he write...